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Sun, 02 Aug 2015 23:14:05 +0000enhourly1The right’s jobs debacle: Here’s how to bring unemployment down to zerohttp://www.salon.com/2014/09/01/the_rights_jobs_debacle_heres_how_to_bring_unemployment_down_to_zero/
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/01/the_rights_jobs_debacle_heres_how_to_bring_unemployment_down_to_zero/#commentsMon, 01 Sep 2014 17:30:00 +0000bzeffhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13759287As America celebrates yet another Labor Day, it's hard not to dwell on the fact that many in the country are still looking for work. According to April figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 9.8 million people actively looking were unable to find employment. Creating jobs for them might be the easiest possible way to help the millions of impoverished job seekers out of poverty.

So, what if we just hired everybody who needs a job? Could a federal job guarantee work?

A dearth of jobs is not the way poverty is usually framed in policy debates. A House Budget Committee report released by Paul Ryan in February cites delinquent fathers, a lack of education and ineffective government programs as reasons why the United States hasn’t made much headway in fighting poverty since Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty in 1964.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2014/09/01/the_rights_jobs_debacle_heres_how_to_bring_unemployment_down_to_zero/feed/218Privatization fetishists resist reform, costing cities millionshttp://www.salon.com/2013/09/20/privatization_fetish_grows_how_corporate_stooges_are_costing_cities_millions/
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/20/privatization_fetish_grows_how_corporate_stooges_are_costing_cities_millions/#commentsFri, 20 Sep 2013 15:23:00 +0000bzeffhttp://www.salon.com/?p=13482644Local governments around the country are facing budgets deep in the red. And for some, the solution is to privatize city assets and services. But few large cities have pursued this agenda as aggressively as Chicago, where everything from tollways and parking meters, mental health care and public education, and even infrastructure funding itself has been turned over from public ownership into the hands of private corporations.

Now a proposed law in Chicago, backed by a coalition of community groups and unions, could slow the selling off of everything city-owned not already nailed to the floor. The Privatization Transparency and Accountability Ordinance (PTAO) is designed to help prevent abuses of privatization, and avoid the kinds of deals negotiated in the past that were intended to help close budget deficits but turned out to be massive boons for corporations and Wall Street while losing long-term revenue for the city.

The bill could serve as an example for cities around the country, and put a check on free market-minded politicians like Mayor Rahm Emanuel attempting to sell off as many public goods as possible. But despite support of a strong majority of the city council, the bill has sat in a forlorn committee where it has not moved since it was first proposed nearly a year ago. Emanuel seems to want the bill to stay buried, away from public debate, so the city’s privatization deals can remain largely unscrutinized.

]]>http://www.salon.com/2013/09/20/privatization_fetish_grows_how_corporate_stooges_are_costing_cities_millions/feed/48Paul Ryan didn’t build that!http://www.salon.com/2012/08/14/paul_ryan_didnt_build_that/
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/14/paul_ryan_didnt_build_that/#commentsTue, 14 Aug 2012 11:45:00 +0000Ben Crairhttp://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12980385When Paul Ryan took to the stage in Mooresville, North Carolina, as Mitt Romney’s running mate, he attacked President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” remark about the role of government in supporting private innovation. But while Republicans have been clamoring to make this election a false dichotomy between the private sector and the public sector, Paul Ryan — heir to a private fortune made by building public highways — is a gaping pothole in that plan. Paul Ryan is a living, breathing GOP example of how public infrastructure and private entrepreneurship work hand-in-hand.

Paul Ryan’s great-grandfather started a construction company to build railroads and, eventually, highways. According to the Web site of Ryan Incorporated Central, the company was “founded in 1884 with a single team of mules building railroad embankments in Southern Wisconsin.” And in the 1800s, railroad construction was subsidized by the federal government. Mid-century, President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act into law, providing taxpayer dollars to fund the construction of a transcontinental railway. All railroads thereafter connected to, and benefited from, that public investment.